three
/θɹiː/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.78 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
num
Describing a set or group with three elements.
noun
The playing card featuring three pips.
noun
Three o'clock, either a.m. or p.m.
noun
Example Sentences
- "Venters began to count them—one—two—three—four—on up to sixteen."
- "There is a soft-mat seat (which originally had a palm fiber underwebbing) supported by three curved transverse braces."
- "Okay, on three, we open the door and jump on the rope. One, two… Wait, wait! Do we go on three? Or do we go on “go”? Three! Who said anything about “go”?"
- "Now we continue zooming-in in three different directions depending on the number of ones."
- "Why should she care? One…two… Do we shoot on three? Yes on three. Like one, two, three, shoot."
- "The beetles are named Binburrum articuno, Binburrum moltres and Binburrum zapdos after three rare Pokémon: Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos."
Etymology
From Middle English thre, threo, thrie, thri, from Old English þrī, from Proto-West Germanic *þrīʀ, from Proto-Germanic *þrīz, from Proto-Indo-European *tréyes. Doublet of tres and trey. Cognate with German drei, Albanian tre, Armenian երեք (erekʻ), Latin trēs, Latvian trīs, Lithuanian trỹs, Greek τρεῖς (treís), Old Church Slavonic трьѥ (trĭje), and others.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /θɹiː/
- British English: /θɹiː/
Inflected Forms
thre (alternative, obsolete)
þree (alternative, obsolete)
threy (alternative, obsolete)
thrie (alternative, obsolete)
free (alternative, pronunciation spelling)
tree (alternative, pronunciation spelling)
t'ree (alternative, pronunciation spelling)
threes (plural)
Derived Forms
Phrases
Table of cardinal numbers 0 to 9 in various languages
bad things come in threes
ball-on-three-balls test
big three
Chinese three-banded box turtle
Chinese three-striped box turtle
clogs to clogs in three generations
common three-ring